Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump has addressed hundreds of US generals in Virginia on topics ranging from climbing up stairs to the crisis in Ukraine – often repeating his talking points and bouncing between subjects.

Trump’s self-described “weave” – his tendency to knit multiple stories and subjects into one set of remarks – grew large on Tuesday as he spoke for more than one hour and 10 minutes.

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He aired familiar grievances about his political opponents, lauded his own foreign policy and called for improving the appearance of warships.

But the US president’s most consequential message to the generals was that the military will be focusing on missions at home.

Here are five key takeaways from Trump’s speech:

Focusing on the ‘enemy within’

Trump suggested throughout the address that he wants the military to respond to perceived threats at home, including what he sees as riots and unauthorised immigration.

“Last month, I signed an executive order to provide training for a quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances,” he said.

“This is gonna be a big thing for the people in this room because it’s the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control.”

Trump has ordered the deployment of military forces in Los Angeles, California; Washington, DC; Memphis, Tennessee; and Portland, Oregon.

On Tuesday, he suggested he will send the military to other major cities, including San Francisco, Chicago and New York, likening the push to war.

“This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within,” Trump said.

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The campaign – which is already facing challenges in the courts – has raised legal questions about the role of the US military and possible violations of the law.

The US Constitution’s 10th Amendment gives all duties not otherwise specified to be federal powers to the states, and that includes policing.

Moreover, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bars the US military from engaging in civilian law enforcement in the US unless “expressly authorised” by the law.

Ironically, Trump’s Republican Party has long championed state rights against expanding federal powers.

Making a case for the Nobel Peace Prize

The US president sought to portray himself as a peacemaker as he enumerated several global crises that he said he personally solved, including clashes between India and Pakistan in May.

He suggested that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for that effort.

“Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not,” Trump said. “They’ll give it to some guy that didn’t do a damn thing.”

He added that it would be a “big insult” to the US if he does not receive the award.

In the first nine months of his second term, Trump has bombed Iran and Yemen, intensified drone strikes in Somalia, and he has been carrying out attacks against boats in the Caribbean that he said are carrying drugs.

But his administration has not provided concrete proof that the deadly air raids targeted drug smugglers. Trump and his aides have joked that the waters near Venezuela are no longer safe for fishermen due to the US military campaign.

Plan to end Gaza war

Trump suggested a ceasefire in Gaza is close, saying Israel and Arab and Muslim nations have accepted his peace plan and now Hamas needs to agree.

He suggested that his 20-point plan could settle the entire region.

“I said, ‘How long have you been fighting?’ ‘Three thousand years, sir.’ That’s a long time, but we got it, I think, settled. We’ll see,” the US president said.

In reality, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict started in the early 1900s with the Zionist colonisation of Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war took place in 1948.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump said he is giving Hamas three or four days to respond to his proposal or it will face a “very sad end”.

Disappointment in Putin

Trump said he is still working to end the war in Ukraine, blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the continuation of the conflict.

Trump also suggested that Russia is struggling militarily in the conflict, saying thousands of soldiers are being killed on each side weekly.

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“I’m so disappointed in President Putin,” Trump said.

“I said I thought he would get this thing over with. He should have had that war done in a week. And I said to him, ‘You know, you don’t look good. You’re four years fighting a war that should have taken a week. Are you a paper tiger?’”

Trump held direct talks with Putin in Alaska last month, and he has been pushing for a summit between the Russian president and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

But so far, US diplomacy has failed to stop the fighting.

Last week, Trump said Ukraine could win back all of the areas captured by Russia during the war, appearing to reverse earlier assertions that Kyiv would have to give up some territory to secure a peace deal with Moscow.

Biden grievances

Throughout the speech, Trump took digs at his predecessor Joe Biden, claiming that the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan under his watch is what motivated Putin to invade Ukraine.

He repeatedly described the Biden administration as “incompetent”.

“You’ll never see four years like we had with Biden and that group of incompetent people that ran this country that should have never been there,” he told the generals.

Trump said he takes stairs carefully to avoid tripping down as Biden did on a couple of occasions when he was president.

“We have great peace through strength. America is respected again as a country,” he said. “We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling down stairs every day. Every day, the guy’s falling down stairs.”